Modern telephone systems generally provide a caller identification feature for identifying the calling party. Caller ID services have become very popular with both residential and business customers. Caller ID services are especially valuable to businesses that use caller ID information to access customer records associated with an incoming call or to route an incoming call to specific customer representatives based on characteristics of the caller, such as a geographic location of the caller. In addition, residential customers frequently employ the caller ID feature to screen unwanted incoming calls.
Generally, customers register for a caller ID service with their telephone service provider. Typically, the customer is connected to the facilities of a service provider through a central office switch. If a called party subscribes to the caller ID service, information about the caller is automatically displayed on a display associated with the telephone of the called party whenever a call is received.
The information displayed about the caller is typically limited to the caller's name or telephone number (or both). U.S. Pat. No. 5,771,283 to Chang et al., entitled “Method for Delivering Enhanced Caller Identification Service in a Telecommunications Network,” discloses a method for delivering enhanced caller identification services to a subscriber. Chang et al. extend the conventional caller ID feature to include information about the geographic location of the caller. Generally, if a called party subscribes to the enhanced caller ID service proposed by Chang et al., the directory number of the calling party is supplemented with geographic identification data associated with the originating switch, so that the true geographic location of the caller can be ascertained.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/261,242, entitled “Method and Apparatus for Delivering Enhanced Caller Identification Services to a Called Party,” discloses a caller ID system that provides a user document address to a called party. The user document address is a pointer or hyperlink, such as a uniform resource locator (URL), to a user document containing additional information about the calling party. While the disclosed caller ID system extends the caller ID information that is presented to a called party, the called party must use the address to access the identified document. For example, in a URL implementation, the called party must have an active Internet connection to obtain the document identified by the URL.
A need therefore exists for an improved method and apparatus for delivering enhanced caller identification services to a called party.